project she was working on. She got to the library but she never got back ... Johnny, you look terrible, boy.”
“How old was she?”
“Just nine,” Herb said. “A man who’d do a thing like that should be strung up by the balls. That’s my view on it.”
“Nine,” Johnny said, and sat down heavily. “Stone the crows.”
“Johnny, you sure you feel okay? You’re white as paper.”
“Fine. Turn on the news.”
Shortly, John Chancellor was in front of them, bearing his nightly satchel of political aspirations (Fred Harris’s campaign was not catching much fire), government edicts (the cities of America would just have to learn common budgetary sense, according to President Ford), international incidents (a nationwide strike in France), the Dow Jones (up), and a “heart-warming” piece about a boy with cerebral palsy who was raising a 4-H cow.
“Maybe they cut it,” Herb said.
But after a commercial, Chancellor said: “In western Maine, there’s a townful of frightened, angry people tonight. The town is Castle Rock, and over the last five years there have been five nasty murders—five women ranging in age from seventy-one to fourteen have been raped and strangled. Today there was a sixth murder in Castle Rock, and the victim was a nine-year-old girl. Catherine Mackin is in Castle Rock with the story.”
And there she was, looking like a figment of make-believe carefully superimposed on a real setting. She was standing across from the Town Office Building. The first of that afternoon’s snow which had developed into tonight’s blizzard was powdering the shoulders of her coat and her blonde hair.
“A sense of quietly mounting hysteria lies over this small New England mill town this afternoon,” she began. “The townspeople of Castle Rock have been nervous for a long time over the unknown person the local press calls ‘the Castle Rock Strangler’ or sometimes ‘the November Killer.’ That nervousness has changed to terror—no one here thinks that word is too strong—following the discovery of Mary Kate Hendrasen’s body on the town common, not far from the bandstand where the body of the November Killer’s first victim, a waitress named Alma Frechette, was discovered.”
A long panning shot of the town common, looking bleak and dead in the falling snow. This was replaced with a school photograph of Mary Kate Hendrasen, grinning brashly through a heavy set of braces. Her hair was a fine white-blonde. Her dress was an electric blue. Most likely her best dress, Johnny thought sickly. Her mother put her into her best dress for her school photo.
The reporter went on—now they were recapitulating the past murders—but Johnny was on the phone, first to directory assistance and then to the Castle Rock town offices. He dialed slowly, his head thudding.
Herb came out of the living room and looked at him curiously. “Who are you calling, son?”
Johnny shook his head and listened to the phone ring on the other end. It was picked up. “Castle County sheriff’s office.”
“I’d like to talk to Sheriff Bannerman, please.”
“Could I have your name?”
“John Smith, from Pownal.”
“Hold on, please.”
Johnny turned to look at the TV and saw Bannerman as he had been that afternoon, bundled up in a heavy parka with county sheriff patches on the shoulders. He looked uncomfortable and dogged as he fielded the reporters’ questions. He was a broad-shouldered man with a big, sloping head capped with curly dark hair. The rimless glasses he wore looked strangely out of place, as spectacles always seem to look out of place on very big men.
“We’re following up a number of leads,” Bannerman said.
“Hello? Mr. Smith?” Bannerman said.
Again that queer sense of doubling. Bannerman was in two places at one time. Two times at one time, if you wanted to look at it that way. Johnny felt an instant of helpless vertigo. He felt the way, God help him, you felt on one of those cheap carnival rides, the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Crack-The-Whip.
“Mr. Smith? Are you there, man?”
“Yes, I’m here.” He swallowed. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Good boy! I’m damned glad to hear it.”
“I still may not be able to help you, you know.”
“I know that. But ... no venture, no gain.” Bannerman cleared his throat. “They’d run me out of this town on a rail if they knew I was down to consulting a psychic.”
Johnny’s face was touched with a ghost of a grin. “And a discredited psychic, at that.”